Guardian’s Ian Black gets ‘trigger’ for latest conflict wrong

Ian Black, the Guardian’s former long-time Middle East editor, managed to blame Israel for the latest conflict with Hamas, despite the fact that his own paper reported the sequence of events accurately.

His May 7th Guardian analysis on the conflict and its aftermath, which argues that Britain should recognize ‘Palestine’, includes the claim that “The immediate trigger for this round of violence was the now routine shooting of Palestinians on the border with Israel…”

However, reports at the Guardian – as well as in everymajormediaoutletwe’ve reviewed – were clear that the latest violence started when two Israeli soldiers were shot along the border. The shooting of two Palestinians during rioting occurred after the shooting of the soldiers and the IDF’s retaliation for that incident.

Here’s the originalreport in the Guardian (via Reuters) on the violence, published on Sat, May 4th:

The [Israeli] strikes on Friday [against Hamas targets] were a response to gunfire from southern Gaza that wounded two Israeli soldiers, the Israeli military said.

…

Later, two Palestinians shot by Israeli troops while taking part in weekly protests along the border died of their wounds, Gaza health officials said.

Here’s the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent Oliver Holmes on May 5th making it clear the the latest mini-war began after terrorists in Gaza shot IDF soldiers:

The latest round began on Friday after a Palestinian Islamic Jihad sniper fired at Israeli troops, wounding two soldiers…

Ian Black got it wrong, and we’ve lodged a complaint with the Guardian Readers’ Editor.

Another detail in Black’s dishonest article also needs to be answered – the “90%” non Jewish inhabitants of Mandatory Palestine whose needs were supposedly neglected. In fact, in accordance with principles which were explicitly upheld in treaties from the late nineteenth century onwards, the civil and religious rights of all the Arab inhabitants were fully protected – those of the Jews less so.